Art and Design: Books

The editor of this massive tome, an architect, is secretary to the US Commission of Fine Arts, an agency of the federal government with seven members appointed by the president. His preface describes the work of the commission since 1910. The commission seeks "urban cohesion and order" and stewards the cultural heritage of Washington. The book covers the commission's purview of architecture, sculpture, city plans, White House renovations, cemeteries, monuments, public art, war memorials, medals, coins, and commemorative objects. Old Georgetown is also in the commission's purview as is the mass transit system's architecture. Neighborhood development and historic preservation are described, and accompanying controversies and political machinations are covered in detail. More than 900 excellent pictures illustrate everything covered. In six insightful essays, historians discuss Washington's issues and classicism, Beaux Arts style, modernism, postmodernism, new urbanism, environmentalism, post 9/11 security, environmentalism, and sustainability. Appendixes cover legislative history, biographies of commissioners, the Old Georgetown Board, and contributing staff and essayists. A list of abbreviations/acronyms is included. This highly detailed, monumental work is an important resource covering Washington's history and the processes that have created the capital's built culture since 1910. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above; general readers. W. L. Whitwell formerly, Hollins College

Contemporary Art and the Cosmopolitan Imagination explores the role of art in conceiving and reconfiguring the political, ethical and social landscape of our time. Understanding art as a vital form of articulation, Meskimmon argues that artworks do more than simply reflect and represent the processes of transnational and transcultural exchange typical of the global economy. Rather, art can change the way we imagine, understand and engage with the world and with others very different than ourselves. In this sense, art participates in a critical dialogue between cosmopolitan imagination, embodied ethics and locational identity. The development of a cosmopolitan imagination is crucial to engendering a global sense of ethical and political responsibility. By materialising concepts and meanings beyond the limits of a narrow individualism, art plays an important role in this development, enabling us to encounter difference, imagine change and make possible the new. This book asks what it means to inhabit a globalized world - how we might literally and figuratively make ourselves cosmopolitans, 'at home' everywhere. Contemporary art provides a space for this enquiry. Contemporary Art and the Cosmopolitan Imagination is structured and written through four 'architectonic figurations' - foundation, threshold, passage and landing - which simultaneously reference the built environment and the transformative structure of knowledge-systems. It offers a challenging new direction in the current literature on cosmopolitanism, globalisation and art.